Film review: Glastonbury the Movie

Glastonbury the Movie takes us right back to the glory days of summer music festivals

These days, summer time means festival time and, as the country gears up to party in fields the length and breadth of the UK (and we in Reading look forward to our very own legendary music extravaganza over the August Bank Holiday weekend), thoughts turn to festivals past.

Particularly, in light of this year’s glaring omission from the festival calendar, Glastonbury.

Festivals used to be fringe events. They were gatherings for the minority – a smattering of music fans and hippie types – but they’ve since been transformed for the image-conscious masses. In our memories, festivals past were shirtless and sun-drenched, permeated by a feelgood peace and love vibe. But the modern festival is known more for incessant rain, commercialisation and mud.

Glastonbury the Movie takes us right back to the glory days. Charting the 1993 festival, it was the aim of the small band of filmmakers behind this film to capture the unique festival atmosphere in the year before TV cameras first descended to broadcast the iconic event to the nation. And they succeeded.

Glastonbury the Movie lays the Glasto-feel down on celluloid in a transcendental 92-minute edit that was originally released in the mid-90s.

Now, with added footage and presented in Cinemascope, this Friday sees the 2012 release of a film that benefits hugely from the passage of time and a cinematic re-showing in an era when festivals are ten-a-penny mainstream money-making machines.

Less a documentary, more a kind of truncated real-time experience of what it’s like to be there, it shuns voiceover in preference to a blend of live stage performances from acts including The Lemonheads, The Verve and Ozric Tentacles, with crowd shots, spaced-out interviews, a hypnotic soundtrack, and festival-goers chilling out, getting down and doing their thing.

There are people doing headstands, piled into the bucket of a digger, dancing on top of vans and market stalls, busking upside down, and juggling naked.

It captures the best bits of what it was like to be there in 1993 perfectly, at the same time as evoking a universal festival experience, and not only will Glastonbury the Movie transport you right back, it will also help banish thoughts of this year’s miserable summer weather.

Taking its lead from the festival’s overarching vibe, Glastonbury the Movie is pure escapism.